alt Hacker NewsI don't think this is correctly capturing the issue. It's just price. Sysco is maximally scaled and cheap. Local weird stuff isn't. It's that simple.
Like, there actually isn't a "shortage" of the kind of local fare the article is remembering. It's just concentrated in higher end fancy places in urban cores. Hipsters love it. We live on that stuff, and there's a huge market to serve it to us.
But the market conditions that produced a hand pie or cheese steak or whatever as a genuine local Food of the People just don't exist anymore. Those things were cheap before, they aren't now. But they aren't gone, or even going anywhere.
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But the size of Sysco creates economies of scale that make it even cheaper and exacerbate the problem. It is bad for larger companies to be able to sell things cheaper.
I'm gonna be a little mean here... I don't think it's about hipsters, urban cores, or even money. It's about whether or not the market cares. I mean, here in Oregon, where the urban/rural divide is very sharp and where hipsterish craft foods and locally sourced ingredients completely dominate Portland: Yes, go a little into the suburbs and most restaurants are fed by Sysco. But pretty much every small town west of the Cascades will have at least a couple restaurants that do everything local and make things from scratch. Some tiny podunk burgs in this region sport restaurants that truly deserve Michelin stars, and breakfast cafes that would be at home in Paris. And they're not just for tourists. Yes, you need money to eat there, but my contention is that whether or not local people go to those places versus predictably bog-standard Sysco cafeterias is not really based on the price point, because they're not necessarily much more expensive. It's based on whether or not people care about what they put in their mouths, and whether they're curious or scared of trying new things. Some of it is purely cultural - people who know how to behave in a Red Lobster may feel freaked out being at a real restaurant with unfamiliar choices. Sysco has become the comfort food of the masses, and a majority of people want comfort and are afraid to stray outside it. You don't have to be a hipster to want fresh food... lots of small town people will go to a locally sourced restaurant if there is one. Just not the majority of them.